In order to complete their family, a couple chose to have another child, and they are now the proud parents of all female children. Only the second all-girl birth cohort in American history, Texas natives Heather Langley, 39, and Priscilla Rodriguez, 35, welcomed their five kids, Hadley, Reagan, Zariah, Zylah, and Jocelyn, last August. The couple, who have been together for nine years and have a daughter named Sawyer, three, decided to try for another child through IVF. They unexpectedly ended up having five children.
When they learned they were having five children, Heather was six weeks along. The doctors initially only noticed 4 gestational sacs, but later discovered 5. When we learned there would be five children, I experienced an immediate sense of dread since I thought my pregnancy would be stressful and challenging. I also didn’t see how we would raise five kids or how in the world we could even choose and settle on five names, let alone one.
Priscilla initially had no desire to have kids. But following the birth of our first daughter, we knew we wanted to try again. Although we were unable to use the same sperm donor due to availability, we reused the IUI, the same fertility therapy we used for Sawyer. Then I discovered that I had quintuplets. We really wanted to have a few males among our five kids, but that didn’t happen.
We got an ultrasound to determine the gender of the infant at around 19 weeks. Other girl, the midwife kept saying. We’re going to have five more girls? I can’t believe it. Wow, there are so many girls. What are we going to do with them all? I kept asking myself. We’ll have six altogether. We then felt really fortunate as a result of their rarity and extraordinaryness when we learned that they would be the second quintuplet group to ever exist in the US.
At 28 weeks, Heather was given some medicine to help the baby’s brain mature because the doctors knew this would happen soon. However, the drug caused Heather to go into early labor. After two days of trying to prevent premature birth, Heather continued to dilate and underwent an emergency cesarean section where all five babies were born in a three-minute period. Their due date was November 2, but because it was so early, they spent the first three months of their lives in the hospital.
The first to go home on Halloween and the last to go home on December 2. Everyone in our home town knows them, they love how rare and special they are. I love being a mom of six, it’s amazing. I’m always surrounded by my girls and there’s nothing better than that.
